Mobile wireless communication devices, such as a cellular telephone or a wireless personal digital assistant, can provide a wide variety of communication services including, for example, voice communication, text messaging, internet browsing, and electronic mail. Each of these applications can have different service requirements for operating characteristics, such as performance parameters for delay latency, packet loss and jitter tolerance. Providing the capability for end to end quality of service (QoS) for an application can prove difficult, as packets can traverse through multiple independent nodes between the mobile wireless communication device and a destination end point. In a wireless access network portion of a connection, limited radio frequency bandwidth can be shared by multiple users, and the transmission capabilities of the wireless access network portion can change dynamically over time. Adapting the generation and transmission of a higher layer application service's packets to dynamically changing lower layer transmission level flows that transport the packets can improve QoS for the higher layer application service.
IP networks were originally designed for best effort delivery of data that could tolerate indeterminate delay and packet loss. For time insensitive data transfer, such as when downloading a file or sending an email, such a best effort connection can suffice; however, other services can require a minimum throughput level or a maximum delay to guarantee a level of QoS. Providing QoS through a best effort connection can prove difficult. A number of applications can perform better over a connection having a set of guaranteed properties than through a best effort connection when decoupling lower layer transmission of packets from higher layer generation and management of packets. For example, real time conversational voice connections and high quality video conferencing services were originally designed for fixed rate circuit switched connections with minimal delay. Adapting an application service, such as a real time video and audio connection between two mobile wireless devices, to a best effort connection that can encounter variable bit rates and delays on the wireless access portions of the connection, can prove challenging.
Thus there exists a need to adapt the generation, management and transmission of packets in a mobile wireless device to improve quality of service.